The Immigrants | Pil and Galia Kollectiv at The Naughton Gallery

The Naughton Gallery presents The Immigrants, a solo exhibition of new work by Pil and Galia Kollectiv. Through a series of small actions undertaken by costumed performers in different locations across the UK, an installation of filmed vignettes posits the futility of the border as a means of demarcating boundaries of identity, power and resources in an age of global capital flows, migrant labour forces, and environmental destruction that does not stop at abstract lines on a map.

Masks drawn from sources as diverse as Romanian folklore and riot police spit masks, combined with props suggesting checkpoints and rafts, invert the hierarchies of border guards and asylum seekers, refugees in boats and Brexit flotillas. The installation leads the viewer through a physical checkpoint to a short narrative film about the bio-political control of a plague village.

Pil and Galia Kollectiv are London-based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. Their work is multidisciplinary – encompassing film, animation, collage, poster production, sculpture, installation, performance and costume design – and explores the relationship between art and politics, the legacy of modernism, and the avant-garde discourses of the twentieth century.

They are contributing editors at Art Papers, the directors of artist-run project space xero, kline + coma, members of the experimental band, WE, and work as lecturers in Fine Art at the University of Reading.

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